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Friday, June 22, 2007

Moon-gazing

The South is an interesting place to live for many reasons. We have poulty reports with our morning traffic, souped-up lawnmower races, and bbq, and a significant portion of our population lack any semblance of self-consciousness about their body.

This lack of self-consciousness is demonstrated in many ways: men wearing overalls and nothing else, women wearing overalls and nothing else, and an insistence on shopping in the junior's department by women too old and too large to get away with it. By far the most conspicuous location for viewing this lack of self-consciousness is the swimming pool.

Case in point: Yesterday afternoon my hubby and I took the kids to our neighborhood pool. We settled down onto pool chairs to watch our boys play and to grab a few precious moments of uninterrupted conversation.

Shortly after we arrived, a family of four came in - mother, father, two kids. The parents were overweight but honestly, one of my favorite things about the South is that everyone is welcome in their bathing suit, no matter their size.

Just make sure the bathing suit fits.

The mother entered the pool in front of us, splashed around for a minute, and then did a slow underwater somersault. This was an ill-fated decision as in the act of going upside-down, her bathing skirt fell away (gravity being annoyingly reliable) and those of us outside the pool were treated to the sight of a large, blindingly white posterior slowly rotating out of the water.

Thankfully, I was wearing sunglasses.

The father came to the side of the pool and sat, ostensibly to talk to his wife. This also was an ill-fated decision as his t-shirt ended firmly at his waist and his trunks slid more than halfway down his bottom and stayed there.

He didn't seem to notice.

I noticed. Hard not to. This wasn't just plumber-butt, this was "President-For-Life-Over-All-Plumbers-Everywhere" butt. I'm surprised he didn't feel the draft.

Maybe being so unself-conscious at the pool isn't a blessing after all.